Latin American Horror Booming at Blood Window Market

Horror, thrillers open up alternative production front throughout the region

Latin American filmmakers are an emerging global force, riding on a wave of genre films. So much so that Latin America’s biggest movie market, Ventana Sur, which means Southern Window, has launched Blood Window, a slice of the mart dedicated to horror.

More widely available digital distribution systems, whether set-top boxes or game consoles or even mobile phones streaming content, have created a demand for youth-skewing genre pics in Europe, Asia and especially the United States.

Javier Fernandez at Buenos Aires’ Incaa, which co-organizes Ventana Sur with the Cannes Festival’s Film Market, likens the rise in Latin American genre to what happened in South Korea a little more than a decade ago, and more recently Spain.

Eli Roth, Chile’s Nicolas Lopez and Christopher Woodrow’s Worldview Entertainment are re-teaming to produce the Lopez-helmed “Beyond the Green Inferno,” the third film from the Roth-Lopez Chilewood hub, after “Aftershock” and “The Green Inferno.”

So why the genre fixation? Helmer Alvarez puts it down to the huge technological leap of the past decade. Digital cameras and cheap post-production software allowed filmmakers yearning to shoot films without any government financing.

Arthouse films “depicting our culture … was the ‘mainstream’ standard: The government was, in a way, the studio dictating what to do,” Alvarez says. “Now those new filmmakers are emerging big time.”

Sales agents already cite Blood Window as a lure to make the trip to Ventana Sur, which draws about 345 participants from outside Latin America, says Jerome Paillard, the Cannes Film Market’s topper and Ventana Sur co-director.

“Juan of the Dead,” a Cuban zombie comedy, closed 40-plus territories; Dynamo’s “La cara oculta,” sold by Fox Intl. Productions (FIP) and Elle Driver, saw strong B.O. in both Colombia and Spain; Uruguayan slasher “The Silent House” and Mexican cannibal family drama “We Are What We Are” have both received U.S. remakes.

Even by U.S. genre standards, Latin American filmmakers get more bang for their buck. “Aftershock” cost a reported $2 million; Jorge Olguin’s “Whispers in the Forest,” Chile’s first 3D pic, was made for $500,000.

“Latin America now has strong film funding, a developed industry and Spanish producers shooting genre movies there,” says Gael Nouaille at France’s Full House.

And while local film funds — such as Brazil’s Fundo Setorial do Audiovisual, which this year controls $16 million — will indeed ensure arthouse’s future, Latin American directors are churning out art pics and thrillers, nabbing fest prizes and strong sales.